VintageComics

This is not true because I wasn't speaking of any these people as being troublemakers from MY perspective. It was in the context of disingenuous people who try to shut others down, making people like Kav, Adamantium and Myself out to be troublemakers when it's not true at all. He did have a dust up, people were nasty to him and I've always been against such behavior. Look at the context below from my posts: When referencing Adamantium, I clearly qualified my statement by saying "IIRC", meaning "If I am remembering this correctly". My mistake was saying "all the time" but it was an honest mistake, based on my perception of people attacking him. It had NOTHING to do with the quality of him as a person. In my next post below, I stated "there's alway someone to complain about" in the context that I'd seen the dustup years before, saw that people were mistreating Adamantium and that I was opposed to such treatment. For goodness sakes, I may have even been in that thread defending the poor guy many years ago. -------------------------------------- Not once did I speak about Adamantium in a negative way. I've always defended his and everyone else's right to express themselves. Then YOU came along and started disparaging me. Why? Because you have a long habit of doing that. You've followed me around since I've been back (and in other places) and several times either posted negative things toward me or disparaging emojis on my posts. And all because you disagree with either my politics or the ideological principles I stand for. Yet, not once have you been able to overturn a single one of my points using logic or reason. Ironically, this is the sort of behavior I want rooted out. Feel free to apologize for accusing me of something I didn't do. M'kay? Thanks.

I agree with everything you wrote, but I'll add this. There are a few bad actors here who don't have genuine intentions and they try to stop people from talking regularly. You've now experienced it with that incident a few years ago and everyone has seen it as people try to shut me, Kav or anyone else down from talking about things they don't want to hear. This is an important conversation because it's not like any of us are malicious people but we get painted as malicious. Not very fair. If someone is posting too much the best thing way to remedy it is befriend that someone and discuss it with them. I actually did that when Kav first joined, because I KNEW people would go after him so I tried in my own way to get him to take his foot off on the gas a bit. Kav can confirm this himself, unless I'm imaging that too. People who want to cancel discussion do so under the guise of "what's best for everyone" but what's truly best for everyone is to allow grown ups to finish their conversations and come to conclusions like we just did, otherwise everyone is the worse for it, bitterness is planted and problems never get resolved. And I think that this conversation alone was worth all the trouble. What a beautiful, happy ending.

Well now, isn't that a turn of events? OK, so I DIDN'T imagine it like Cat accused me of doing. Thanks for clarifying. Like you, as soon as I joined back in 2004 I too started defending newcomers and took a little heat for it and here I am defending people and taking heat for it 20 years later. Some things never change. Now imagine if we lived in a cancel culture society and weren't able to talk these things through properly to their final conlcusion? For what it's worth @ADAMANTIUM the reason I have never thought ill of you is because, quite literally, when you post, I see myself in your posts. You seem to post in a similar spirit as I do, with the intent to want to make things better for everyone. I just have better grammar and spelling.

I've joined other boards that seem a lot more interested in objectively and thoroughly discussing love of specific artists, storylines, and comic content in general. I've always found this board to be more centered on collecting and debating things like pressing, restoration, and grading. I'd also add cover art is a strong theme here as opposed to internal content. That's entirely because CGC is the single most powerful driving force in the rising value of comics, and they also have made the cover the focus of the entire product. For people who weren't involved in the hobby 20 years ago, discussing whether CGC was going to be around in a few years was a real discussion. Then, when it was apparent they were going to "stick around" that discussion evolved into "well, why aren't they grading by Overstreet standards" Now the discussion is "Why isn't Overstreet grading by CGC standards" This is a form of "social programming", albeit not a negative one, but this community has been programmed over time, by the dollar values and the cover appeal to gravitate towards those things at the expense of the more purist ways of looking at the hobby. So the community is a product of the force that drives them and unless most people choose to act less like consumers and more like appreciators of art, nothing will change. The way to change that is for people to make an actual effort to look past those things. I always have tried to be on the losing side. I cracked my personal books out to show the interiors. I've talked about the negative effects of the movies on the hobby long term by creating short term spikes. I've spoken out against the premiums people pay for certain qualities because I feel they're not worth those premiums. But if more people don't actively participate in those things, they won't stem the tide.

Some of the newer people on this forum may not know this story, but the old timer's definitely will. There was a scandal here many years ago about someone trimming books. Then, a well known dealer got caught trying to slip a knowingly trimmed book from this trimmer which ended up in a purple label, back into a blue holder by re-submitting the book they knew to be trimmed to CGC. A reputable dealer who I believe is known for their integrity came onto the forums to expose the trimmed book debacle because they felt it was the right thing to do. Eventually, somehow, the conversation turned onto the dealer exposing the crime even though he did nothing wrong but come on here and try to war everyone. This is how large crowds operate. There is always going to be people who see the worst and people who see the best in everything, and more often than not, the people who tend to see the worst in others are often the same people who can't see the same in themselves.

Look man, I know I'm not your favorite person and haven't been for years. If I missed the nuance, then many others miss the nuance too. Make sure you go reprimand all of them. My dad paid a contractor upfront 40 years ago to refinish our basement. The contractor disappeared with my dad's money. I learned that lesson at the age of something like 12 from my dad before I even hit puberty. Based on my personal experience, I was uttering surprise that others hadn't learned that lesson and thought it was a good idea to hand over money for future work. That's all it was. Could I have worded it better? Probably. We can all improve our communication skills. People see what they choose to see in someone else, and you generally choose to see the worst in things I write (as witnessed by the two threads we're going back and forth in) because you've always had your differences with me (the feeling is not mutual BTW - I've never had a problem with you) but turning it around on me for "shaming" is a stretch. My only goal with that post, besides genuinely being surprised that Mike was asking people to pay upfront and that people were paying it, was to emphasize for others what a bad idea it was FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE BEEN ON THE FENCE about such things and to help prevent people from making the same mistakes in the future.

Well, then I guess I was wrong. My sincere apologies to @ADAMANTIUM for making that mistake. Again, I wasn't disparaging him in any way. I simply thought I'd seen others disparage him at one point and was defending everyone's right to coexist.

Is there a way to use caveat emptor after the fact that is NOT victim shaming? Because that is basically the way everyone uses it. Someone posts a bad deal and someone after the fact posts "caveat emptor". So all of these people are victim shaming then? https://boards.cgccomics.com/search/?q="caveat emptor"&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=4

Let me repeat again: I have never had a problem with him and I think he's a great person. The fact that YOU see something that isn't there speaks more about you. I've used his name next to mine and several other boardies, as an example of how people with lots of posts can irritate some people. Nothing more. You're irritated by me so you see the worst in what I write. To resolve this, you never answered my question so I'll rephrase. Did some other boardies have a problem with Adamantium at one time or did I imagine that?

You're asking me how Tik Tok is used in countries close to either the US or China? I believe it's used one way within China and differently outside of China in all other countries How it's used in the Canada, UK, Australia and elsewhere compared to the US is probably going to vary based on each culture. In Canada it's used in much the same way as in the US from what I've seen.

Why would you assume I have a problem with him. I have even CLEARLY SAID I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST THEM. Duh. I simply noted out some of the more voluminous posters, because they've all had run ins with people at some point. At one point, I came onto the forums and noticed there were people applying heat to him. Do I have that wrong? I have nothing against those posters AT ALL. Dude, recheck that Rorschach test.

Neo and Agent Smith.

Is the term "buyer beware" or caveat emptor victim shaming?

I think it's more of a stretch for someone born and raised here and less of a stretch for people who have roots outside of the US. My parents also came from behind the Iron Curtain to escape torture and jail (literally), so my view of the world is going to be very different than yours.

I've had books worked on by resto experts and have NEVER paid upfront. This is just bad decision making by consumers. Who would pay for a renovation on their home upfront? I feel terrible for people who lost their money but I just can't see how anyone thought it was going to be a good idea. This is a clear example of "buyer beware". On a positive note, our most costly lessons are our greatest teachers and I'm sure nobody will make that mistake again. Good luck everyone. Genuinely.

I agree that back cover scans would be great. I think they now add them at certain dollar values but I'm not sure what the cutoff is.

I believe that knowing more about the world around you benefits society, and people with roots outside of the North America will generally agree with this. Talk to anyone from outside of North America and they know more about America than the Americans know about the other country. Americans in particular have a very different view of the world in that they generally don't know or care what goes on outside of their borders. Your answer is in the @WolverineX post which you quoted with mine, but to expound: Tik Tok is a Chinese invention, which is an important point, and in the West Tik Tok used very differently than in China. In China there are time limits and the content is different. People use it to promote their personal educational accomplishments, etc. In the West Tik Tok is used by the crack smoking, trashy crowd to promote things like the Tide Pod challenge. If Westerners knew about this, it may influence how they use Tik Tok. Again, knowing more about the world around you makes society better overall. Social media has had a very negative effect on the West - that is indisputable, and some experts believe that Tik Tok is actually (either inadvertently or purposefully) dumbing down the West while maintaining higher social standards in the West. To be more blunt, some believe Tik Tok is a CCP device used to socially dumb down society in the West. We're at a level of foreign policy warfare now that this is actually very possible. That is an entirely different discussion, but you asked, so...

Yep. I loved these. @FlyingDonut used to organize the Wizard Chicago one and we'd get a 100 boardies on a Saturday night hanging out. Once he stopped that one fell apart. Wizard Chicago was always an easy one to do this at because of the way the convention area was structured. All the hotels circled the convention center and the steakhouse was across the road. The other large, comparable shows (like NYC, SD, Orlando etc) were a little more spread out across the cities so not as convenient for everyone. --------------------------------- I used to organize basketball games for boardies at Chicago and SD for years and everyone enjoyed these too. The pandemic kind of put a kibosh on that and some boardies have aged out (we've been doing the basketball games for at least 10 years) so some can no longer play. I still play daily so it's an important part of my life and I'm sure there is a young crowd that might enjoy it so I might start that up next year. -------------------------------- Plus, Dolmayan (System of a Down / Torpedo Comics) also started organizing music concerts around various conventions. I was a part of two of them, and they had a few others that I attended. We did shows in Chicago, San Diego and New York and people absolutely loved those as well. I think a takeaway here is that like in family and relationships, general community takes effort and as soon as people stop putting in the effort, things change very quickly and the general community sort of drifts apart. Ditto here. I spend a lot more time in PMs now than I ever used to and that has been partly because of the divisions formed and partly because as @COI stated, the complexity of moderating the forums has changed the culture.

It wasn't a spout, it was honest mistake on my part, but it was truly irrelevant to the main point. The main point in this string of discussion is that it's far easier and more beneficial to EVERYONE to ignore someone WHO DOESN'T EVEN ENGAGE YOU than it is to complain about it repeatedly. I can't believe anyone is arguing this point. Everyone here pretends to be all about "inclusivity" and "diversity" until something annoys them and then their idea of "inclusivity and diversity" is to make everyone bend to their will, march in lockstep and eradicate the enemy. Sounds about right in this day and age. Have you even tried to use the ignore feature? Serious question.

As in every relationship, it takes at least two to tango. Every relationship is 50/50. Not 40/60, not 30/70, but exactly 50/50 because if one side doesn't like something they are always free to leave and not engage. I'm not going to go down that road again, and I have fully taken accountability for my part, but you were personally instrumental in 50% of the transformation of the forums into an argumentative place, so let's not go down that road. How does this relate to simply ignoring what people don't like? I actually DO believe there's something wrong with it philosophically and have personally spoken out against it for as long as I've been here. I'm against money driving discussion because I feel it's a sort sighted path and I've been against this place turning into an investment forum probably since I saw it happening in 2010 when it started to be apparent that the movies were driving investment talk but I've also not tried to be dogmatic about it.

How many Americans do you think know this? Almost none. It's really sad. You know where I found out about this? On the #1 podcast in the world, which is a banned topic here because someone here convinced moderation that the podcast "spreads misinformation".

You also got to meet me.

Dude, it's not like I went through the entire Cornfield thread with a microscope and then conspired to twist the facts. This isn't 9/11. I just did a quick math equation because I couldn't care less. You should have seen the uproar when I upped my posting volume. If Mike showed a chart, it would have looked like Mt. Everest and boy did people complain. Bosco, Adamantium, 1950's war (no offense meant against any of them), ME. There's always going to be someone to complain about. The solution is to figure out how to get along, not how to stay divided. Oh, making 99% of someone's posts DISAPPEAR is not enough? Maybe a belly rub might make you feel better, then. Tough balls. Hit the ignore feature. We quite literally live in a world where people can't control themselves but want to control everyone else...but they REALLY want world peace.

Driven out by haters? He was given his own section of the forum for God's Sake. As always, you're hyper focusing on convenient, inciteful parts of the discussion for effect and ignoring the breadth and depth of the rest of the discussion. It's a lie by omission and it's how half the world preferably operates these days. The Cornfield thread was started because several posters, Kav being only ONE of them, were clogging up threads with banter. The thread was started so that EVERYONE can have a place to just talk nonsense. It's the Friday-time-all-the-time-thread. It was a BRILLIANT idea by Mike. The thread has 2000 pages currently. It was started exactly 2 years ago. That's 1000 pages a year, which is an average 20 pages a WEEK. Kav hasn't been here in a year. Who has been posting in the Cornfield thread? Kav's ghost? His cat? No. EVERYONE has been posting there, but this is just another clear example of Kav hate. This is why I choose to not engage you anymore. The only reason I replied to you is to point out the Kav-hate dissonance which is so blatant and ugly it's off-putting.

That's him! He had a Pete Townsend avatar IIRC. Every time he posted, his post would self-multiply dozens of times and fill pages...which makes calling him a "man of few words" funny in this context. He was definitely a cool cat!